POWAY GOLF COURSE SEEKS GROUNDWATER

Maderas forced to halt pumping in 2011, asks council to resume; neighbors object

It’s a fight that began 14 years ago when the Maderas Golf Club began filling its ponds with groundwater pumped from beneath its newly constructed championship golf course in the exclusive northern hills of Poway.

Neighbors said their wells — for many, the only source of water feeding into their luxury homes — were going dry.

Told by the city to stop pumping two summers ago, the club now wants to resume partially irrigating its course with groundwater in order to save a lot of money.

Poway officials are not commenting publicly on Maderas’ request.

“The city thinks it premature to be meeting with the press about the project,” said Jason Martin, senior planner for the city. “We are not complete with our review and we’re compiling more information … there are some things in the works right now. We need to let things settle.”

Homeowners and golf course officials, however, appear to be gearing for battle.

In 2000 the city entered into an agreement with Sunroad Enterprises — the owners of Maderas — that allowed the company to use its wells to partially irrigate the golf course. There were many conditions, including constant monitoring of groundwater levels. If levels at nearby wells dropped beyond a specific level, the city had to be notified and had the power to force Maderas to turn off the pumps.

In August 2011, that’s exactly what happened. Since then, the golf course has had to use raw water that comes directly from the aqueduct that later feeds into Lake Poway to irrigate its course at high cost.

Now Maderas is coming back before the City Council — tentatively as soon as July 16 — asking that its permit to operate be modified. Sunroad has spent a great deal of money on study after study that it says proves that Maderas’ wells are not the cause of their neighbors low water levels.

Some estimate the company could save $300,00 to $500,000 annually if allowed to use its wells.

But opposition to any modifications to Maderas’ permit is being fought hard by neighbors, many of them wealthy residents of homes along and near Old Coach Road, and by others who fear that the golf course’s pumping will cause long-term, irreparable damage to their wells and to the aquifer that sits beneath them all.

They too have spent money on studies that essentially conclude that more research needs to be done to figure out exactly what effect Maderas’ wells have had, and will have, on groundwater levels all over northern Poway.

The Friends of Blue Sky Canyon Ecological Reserve, roughly 1½ miles from the golf course, has recently asked the council to deny the modifications.

“The riparian habitat of Blue Sky Ecological Reserve depends solely on the Sycamore Creek watershed,” wrote Bob Kiang, a director of Friends of Blue Sky in an email to the city. “If the aquifer under that watershed is depleted, there will be no more Blue Sky. Because of that, Blue Sky would strongly urge the council to not grant the CUP modification.”